ORO-MEDONTETOWNSHIP,
Ont. -- A central Ontario farmer refuses to believe aliens or Star Wars
weapons are responsible for three, neatly-formed circles that have appeared
in his grain field.

"I try to live in the real world," Garnet Horne,
59, said yesterday.

At first, the family suspected the three circles -- 23,
15 and 12 metres in diameter -- were a prank.

"I figured some jackass tramped it down to get our
goat," Horne's older brother, Donald, said.

But there was no pathway leading to or from the three
circles.

"We got right down and looked for footprints,"
said Garnet. "Not a heel mark, nothing. It isn't human. It's got me
beat."

Inside each circle, the barley and oats have been flattened
to the ground in a symmetrical, counter-clockwise swirl. Around the circular
edges the flattened grain meets a perfectly upright wall of unharmed oats
and barley.

"It's not aliens and it's not somebody tramping
it down, said Garnet. "I can't explain it."

Garnet first spotted the circles while driving by the
field at dusk Thursday. "It scared the wits out of me," he said.

This is not the first time crop circles have appeared
west of Orillia, Ont., near Bass Lake.

In 1992 and 1993, circular patterns appeared about 3
km north of the Horne farm in a corn field.

Victor Lourenco, Ontario director of the Mutual UFO Network,
said there is not necessarily a link between the circles and extraterrestrials.